Delayed Perspective review of AIOTM

June 30, 2013
Delayed Perspective

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Welcome to Delayed Perspective the blog about Film and TV and other random things I tenuously argue are related to the subject. The mission of Delayed Perspective is a self-defeating attempt to share with you my thoughts on the films and TV shows that have been out for a while and I have only just caught onto or caught up with.

Often I will take a sideways look at a subject or sometimes I may do a straight up review, depending on what takes my fancy.

In this weeks DP I want to discuss podcasts, and before you say, podcasts arent TV or Film, I refer you back to my opening paragraph. I have been listening to podcasts for about four years now and I thought it would be cool from time to time to recommend one or two that you should seek out. Quite often some amazingly entertaining ones are available for free from a very popular download platform (clue: it is not the Beatles record label and it rhymes with myPrunes).

A Fistful Of Herring

My first podcast recommendation is As It Occurs To Me, an internet sketch show by Richard Herring. Some of you may remember him from his partnership with Stewart Lee in the 1990s and their wonderful TV shows Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy. I have followed Herrings work for a few years now because, put simply, he makes me laugh a lot.

When I first listened to As It Occurs To Me I could not believe how insanely funny it was, I felt like I had discovered something very special. However trying to explain its brilliance is difficult because Herring is a tricky customer. Seemingly a puerile buffoon with a plethora of knob gags, he is in fact clever, witty and for ever challenging our perceptions of societal conventions. Unlike his much vaunted former comic partner, he rarely gets the credit he deserves for innovative comedy.

As It Occurs To Me is side splittingly funny, surreal and very, very rude. It is so funny in fact that when I was listening to it in bed my wife ordered me out because I was giggling so much it was preventing her from sleeping. Richard Herrings genius is that he presents a lot of his work through his disarmingly innocent persona but underneath that is a fierce intelligence, quick wit and often savage satire. Freed from the shackles of TV censorship, Herring came up with the concept of As It Occurs To Me and his objective was to write, produce and perform the show to a live audience all within the space of a week. The premise of the show is simply things that have occurred to him during the week, from this simple concept he conjures a host of surreal characters and deliberately self-defeating recurring jokes.

Ably assisted by Dan Tetsell, Christian Reilly and Emma Kennedy, the format ran for 3 series. I am glad to see that recently Herring has appeared more often on TV (he just wants to be on the Telly, please let him be on the Telly) and he definitely deserves his own solo TV show. I would be intrigued to see what brilliance he could come up with in this format.

He has several other podcasts available to purchase or for free download at the moment, my favourite being his Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, where he proves himself as funny as ever but also a skilled interviewer, as proven with his moving interview with Stephen Fry.